Are paid links slapped with Google penalty?

Whats happening in the directory business nowdays? I am coming after 4 years and looks like Google is punishing all directories selling links. I have been getting lots of requests to remove paid links.

Looks to be Google is slapping directories having paid links with google penalty?

 

I think you have jumped to the wrong conclusion here. How many of the link removal requests are for listings that use keyword rather than company/site names in the title? It seems Google isn't targeting paid links as much as too many links with the same anchor text on all types of sites, not just directories.

 

You are seeing the result of the Penguin algorithm change. One school of thought is panicking and requesting people remove links to them from everywhere (not just directories). The other school of thought is capitalising on the panic, and employing negative SEO to have their competitors links removed (by creating bogus/fraudulent removal requests).

Has nothing to do with paid links and everything to do with the panic caused by Penguin penalties.

 

It's a direct result of the unnatural links warning some webmasters are receiving in Google Webmaster Tools.

Whether or not they're receiving the warning because of paid directory links is a different question, but that's why they would be contacting you.

 

This is becuase Goolgle striclty emposes the organic link building.

 

There are very few paid directories that have been penalized by Google. The penalized sites are extremely poor quality. The vast majority of sites are fine.

 

I didn't see any warning from google or webmaster that web directories could be harm. It just a propaganda against directories. If it is true then what about dmoz, yahoo, botw? Will a website be slapped by google if a website listed in these directories?

 

It’s just a bunch of BS started by ignorant SEO flops to keep the rumor and speculation mill going and generate some SEO business.

 

Thanks, but some of my clients who requested to remove paid links, said that "they received unnatural links warning from my directory".

P.S: Thanks all, i remember most of you in this thread here since 2005.

 

Not much of a surprise, you are an OLD fella

 

Don't believe it. I was told the same thing but when I asked for a copy of the letter they never contacted me again.

 

I had the same thing. Since their email address was not the same as the company with the listing I asked them for an email from the domain. It never came.

I have a felling that some unscrupulous people are trying to eliminate the links of their competitors.

 

Actually it's highly likely they did receive the warning in GWT a lot of webmasters did. I think it's a bit delusional to think competitors would go to all this effort to remove a bunch of directory links when the time/reward for doing it would be negligible or a complete waste of time.

 

All directory are all same program and content,and same catatory,what mean quality?

 

Donot login google webmaster tool,your site will punished by google easily.

 

Google is evil.

 

Every one know Google does not like paid links and Google banned those website who use paid link.

 

Perhaps they did receive a warning, but the warnings as far as I know don't tell you which links are the unnatural ones. The person requesting the removal has ASSUMED that they are from directories, based on bad SEO advice. Simple as that. They probably employed a dodgy SEO who spammed their URL to splogs, that's far more likely to cause penalty.

 

i doubt google is punishing paid links. To be safe though perhaps it's better to refrain from "paid links" and work on getting natural backlinks.

 

Indeed, they dont tell you where bad links you link to or link from. Once you are slapped with penalty you site pages will disappear from search results. Then you will see this "Notice of detected unnatural links" in GWC (webmaster central). When you submit your reinclusion request to google, you are supposed to find out, remove the links and then explain them in the request. Only then your site will recover from penalty. This also means that you have to contact webmasters or directory owners and ask them to remove your links from their site. Trust me it was very difficult and i have experienced this.

This is how a notice of penalty look like. Google will not tell you that you have received the penalty, but indirectly they slap with this notice. This means your site has received penalty and will get poor rankings in google. You will also experience a dramatic drop in traffic.

I still dont understand why Google is after paid directories. Afterall any quality directory will need to charge a small fee to review the manual inclusion request. In my opinion there is nothing wrong asking for review fee, in that way human edited directories, are indirectly helping Google to eliminate spam or link farms. Site owners including directory owners, are free to do whatever they want with their site and i am unhappy with Google dictating terms, which is unfair to the neutrality of the internet. Google algorithms can very well find out paid links or links from bad neighbourhood but instead of penalizing site owners, they should ignore such links and move on than punishing sites. PageRank is already dead anyways, why would Google punish those who buy/sell links which manipulate pagerank? whats the point and fuss is all about slapping penalty? Sorry, i dont mean to be rude, but in my opinion google should not be that harsh on webmasters.